As some of you may have heard, there is a ridiculous lawsuit being publicized where a judge is suing a neighborhood dry cleaner for $67.3 million because they allegedly lost his pants. The case of the judge’s pants, which opened for trial in a packed courtroom in Washington on Tuesday, has been lampooned as an example of American legal excess.

Which reminds me of the ridiculous excess in Sun's latest blog entry. First of all, the math is really simple. 4.7 is greater than 1.4. IBM's POWER6 4.7 GHz chip is faster than Sun's 1.4 GHz UltraSPARC T1 chip. And second of all, the IBM System p 570 remains the #1 SPECjbb2005 2-core result (1).

In the pants case, the judge is claiming that the dry cleaner substituted a cheap pair of pants for his very expensive ones - but that he wasn't fooled. I'm sure he also wouldn't be fooled by Sun's math.

Yesterday HP published an Itanium2 TPC-C result. The new IBM System p 570 result achieved 4.3 times the performance of the HP result using only twice the number of cores.(1) That's 117% more performance per core !

And still no sign of any Sun result. They must be as virtual as that bouquet.

Yesterday NASA selected an IBM System p5-575 cluster to meet the agency's future supercomputing requirements. NASA picked the IBM supercomputer to play a critical role in many NASA missions, including new space vehicle design, global climate studies and astrophysics research.

This system has 640 computational cores and a peak performance of approximately 5.6 teraflops. A teraflop equals a trillion floating point operations per second.

5.6 trillion sounds really big. Until you consider that IBM's BlueGene/L system that is currently #1 on the TOP500 supercomputer list is 280.6 trillion (floating point operations per second).

And this really is rocket science.

************************************************Source: http://www.top500.org. All results as of 6/07/07.

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

I love those ads where you answer one simple question and then they give you an IQ score predicting your total future intellectual achievement. Everything should be so simple.

Speaking of IQ, Sun recently published a TPC-H 300GB benchmark result with Sybase IQ.(1) Nice price/performance but note that it's #20 in performance for the 300GB scale factor. Just think what kind of terrible performance you could get for free.

Next time you get an urge to take an IQ test, remember the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald. "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

If only Spider-Man 3 got such good reviews. But he's not 25 million times as fast as hummingbird wings.

************************************************The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

25 is a pretty big number. Quarter of a century, $25, age you can drive some rental cars. In fact, next month I will have my 25th anniversary at IBM and it seems like a very, very long time ago that I first walked into the building with the clock tower wearing a suit with a bow tie and pearls.

And 25 is not just any 25. These benchmarks cover a huge portfolio of industry standard and ISV benchmarks - everything you ever wanted - from TPC-C to SPEC to SAP and much, much more. So take your pick and enjoy.

After all, 25 doesn't happen every day.

************************************************The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

SPEC and the SPEC benchmark names are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.

SAP, mySAP and other SAP product and service names mentioned herein as well as their respectivelogos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries allover the world.

Last week I received a "Rewards" card from my favorite department store that I could use to save $25. It contained a small line at the bottom of the card which said "Exclusions apply; see back for details." The Exclusions included cosmetics, shoes, handbags and jewelry, which is everything that I ever buy at this store.

You see, this week HP and Oracle published a new TPC-H business intelligence benchmark result.(1) The result was so unimpressive that it didn't even make the leadership charts for performance or price/performance, even looking at just the 3TB size. And here was this press release calling this result "record-breaking" with "superior performance." When you read all the words, you see that the claim is only for 3TB with Windows.

************************************************The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

This week I am in Austin talking about POWER6. But since I can't say anything more about that, I'm going to discuss my dinner last night.

I had lovely incredible shrimp fajitas. And I realized it was an anniversary of sorts because 20 years ago I had my very first fajita, which also happened to be in the great state of Texas. I lived in New York but I had never heard of fajitas before. Now, of course, you can even get them in Ohio.

But anyway, what I really need to talk about today is my Big Green front lawn. For years I had used a lawn company which killed all the dandelions with chemicals. Last year I used a "natural lawn" company. The guy came out to kill the dandelions with oats and honey. Two days later all our grass was killed too. But that's another story. This year I'm pulling dandelions.

Which is a great lead-in for IBM's announcement today on IBM's Project Big Green. IBM has led the technology industry in energy-smart innovation for over 40 years and is committed to climate protection. With today's announcement, IBM is helping clients find opportunities to improve energy efficiency and demonstrate how new solutions will help them in the years ahead. Whether IBM is evaluating the efficiency of existing data centers, designing and implementing new ones, or disposing of existing assets, IBM provides a full-range of solutions and services to meet energy demands.

So whether you like saving tons in energy costs in your data center or just pulling out all the dandelions in your front lawn the natural way, this one's for you.

************************************************The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

SPEC and the SPEC benchmark names are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.

A few weeks ago I went to the dentist. And, as usual, he was not happy. You see, I have "weak" teeth. I brush and I floss and I hardly ever drink soda but I still have "weak" teeth.

So I was very excited to hear about IBM's new announcement on breakthrough nanotechnology. IBM announced the first-ever manufacturing application of "self assembly" used to create a vacuum -- the ultimate insulator -- around nanowires for next-generation microprocessors. And the performance is outstanding - the electrical signals on the chips can flow 35 percent faster compared to the most advanced chips using conventional techniques.

We are told that this self assembly concept occurs in nature every day. It is how complex snowflakes are made, how seashells are created, and very importantly, how enamel is formed on our teeth. With this most significant semiconductor technology innovation in a decade, could this "doughnut design" also actually be good for teeth?

************************************************The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

On Sunday I pulled up all 500 dandelions in my front lawn. On Monday, 100 more showed up.

And I got mad, which is the way I feel these days when I read Sun's latest repetitive blog entries on benchmarks, which also just keep showing up. So let's set the broken record straight.

Yes, TPC-C is not the one and only benchmark. (either is TPC-E for that matter, but we are looking forward to it) You need to analyze a portfolio of benchmarks across many different types of applications to see true leadership. But that said, clients and analysts I have talked to all say that they want to see TPC-C since it represents OLTP, is applicable to many different types of customers and has the "same rules for everyone."

Which brings me to the next point. Industry standard and ISV benchmarks have specs. The point is to "tune" your system to get the best performance out of that benchmark, while of course following all of the strict rules of that benchmark.

And finally, Sun is asking for new benchmarks from IBM. As I always say, be careful what you ask for. Now that it is May, even more dandelions will sprout.

************************************************The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

A newly discovered feature of dog body language was announced earlier this week which supports research on the emotional asymmetry in the brain. When dogs feel fundamentally positive about something or someone, their tails wag more to the right side of their rumps. When they have negative feelings, their tail wagging is biased to the left.

And this news got me to thinking about storage benchmarks. How would a dog wag his tail when hearing about the latest Storage Performance Council benchmark results ?

IBM recently published excellent SPC-1 and SPC-2 results on the IBM System Storage DS4800.(1) IBM holds the #1 spots for these benchmarks with the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller.(2) Positive feelings on IBM results, so tail to the right.

Sun recently posted results for the Storage Performance Council SPC-2 benchmark on the Sun StorageTek 2540 Array.(3) In fact, these new Sun results have lower performance than ALL published IBM results. Negative feelings on Sun results, so tail to the left.

Do you think this will work with TPC-C ?

******************************************************(1) IBM result for the SPC Benchmark 1 on the IBM System Storage DS4800 Turbo of 45,014.81 IOPS ($16.03 $/IOPS over 6,871.277 GB ASU Capacity) using mirroring. The total total storage configuration (TSC) price was $721,618. IBM result for the Storage Performance Council SPC-2 benchmark on the IBM System Storage DS4800 of 1,381.67 SPC-2 MBPS and a price/performance of $174.09 at a ASU Capacity of 3,497.798 GB in a RAID5 configuration. (2)The top SPC-1 result is the IBM TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller 3.1 result of 155,519 IOPS (12,216.80 GB, $12.76/IOP, Mirroring). The top SPC-2 result is the IBM TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller result of 4544 MBPS (51,264 GB, $400.78/MBPS, RAID5).(3) Sun results for the Storage Performance Council SPC-2 benchmark on the Sun StorageTek 2540 Array of 730.04 SPC-2 MBPS and price/performance of $46.26 at an ASU Capacity of 1,282.05 GB in a mirrored configuration and a result of 735.62 SPC-2 MBPS and a price/performance of $45.91 at an ASU Capacity of 2,177.55 GB in a raid5 configuration.

Source: http://www.storageperformance.org/results; Results as of 4/27/07.

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

SPC Benchmark-1 and SPC Benchmark-2 are trademarks of the Storage Performance Council.

And as you probably know, DB2 9 also plays a major role in many industry standard and ISV leadership benchmark results such as TPC-C and SAP SD.

Srini Bhagavan, Information Management Architect in IBM Software Group, recently alerted me to another DB2 9 winning performance story involving PHP. PHP is the market-leading dynamic language for producing modern Web applications. Its popularity for building content management and e-commerce systems stems from its portability, ease of use, and wide support for accessing database and enterprise data sources.

************************************************The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

SAP, mySAP and other SAP product and service names mentioned herein as well as their respectivelogos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries allover the world.

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

SAP, mySAP and other SAP product and service names mentioned herein as well as their respectivelogos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries allover the world.

Last night I went to Disneyland. The most awesome ride was one where they strapped you in your seat and off you went on a virtual reality flight, sweeping over the beautiful state of California. I flew over the Pacific, through vineyards, by tall buildings and over Yosemite. But of course, it wasn't real.

And that got me thinking again about Sun's new SPARC benchmark results. Besides the unimpressive SAP result I discussed yesterday, Sun also published Linpack, Stream, SPECjbb2005, SPECompM2001, and SPECompL2001 results, all equally unimpressive when it comes down to it. The IBM p5-570 SPECjbb2005 result is 1.48 times performance per core over the new SPARC result.(1) IBM remains the clear leader for SPECompM2001 (2). The IBM p5-595 demonstrates 1.71 times better performance per core on SPECompL2001 than the new SPARC result.(3) The brand new SPARC Stream result had only 20% better performance but needed 100% more cores.(4) The new Sun Linpack result finally reached a Teraflop. IBM works with Petaflops !

So make sure when you see benchmark claims you understand the reality. Now I need to go so I can schedule my hang gliding session.

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

SAP, mySAP and other SAP product and service names mentioned herein as well as their respectivelogos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries allover the world.

SPEC and the SPEC benchmark names are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.

I'm in Anaheim, California for a conference this week where I am speaking on Energy Efficiency in the Data Center. I have been working since 4 AM. Tonight the networking event is at Disneyland. Sun and Fujitsu just announced their new SPARC servers today with some new benchmarks. Because the benchmark results are so unimpressive, I'm still going to Disneyland.

The IBM p5-570 SAP SD 2-tier 16-core result from last year is 1.5 times better performance per core that the new Sun result highlighted in the press release. (1) The new SPARC Linpack, Stream, and SPEC results are all equally unimpressive.

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

SAP, mySAP and other SAP product and service names mentioned herein as well as their respectivelogos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries allover the world.

SPEC and the SPEC benchmark names are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.

The old saying goes "elephants never forget." This saying has actually been proven, particularly in the case of older female elephants who are actually very good at recognizing friendly faces.

A recent Dell SPECjbb2005 result initially looks like a strong 8-core Java business applications result. If you take a look at the benchmark report you find that this result used 16GB main memory.(1) The IBM x3650 result from earlier this year used 8.(2) (Don't forget to look at the bops/JVM instance in this benchmark as well.) Dell needed twice the memory here to achieve only 3.2% more performance.